Open the drawer

Photographs from the collection of Hasan Belal

The website of Hasan Ibrahim Belal features raw photojournalism of Syria during the civil war and after the fall of Assad. Immense mountains of broken concrete, rubble, heaps of junk, bare shot-up buildings, rescue workers with bloodied bodies, crowds with flags, burned cars, children in rags — you get the picture, you see something similar in your newspaper and on your screens.

Before a picture of a mass of shattered concrete a hand sticks out another picture: a group of women is seated together on a couch, laughing at the camera, on their lips a bright red lipstick, their hair’s beautifully styled for a festive occasion that must have once taken place in the space that has now been shot empty, nothing left but the debris on the ground.

Belal’s interest in visual anthropology makes him tell longer stories as well, he has a beautiful reportage on the nightlife of Damascus, moving on, during and after the war. Yet we decided to not publish the work of this talented photographer here, and instead chose a side-project of his: Open the Drawer, a long-term visual and documentary art project that seeks to revive old photographs and letters preserved in the Belal family archive.